In the triangle of reciprocally referring linguistic categories "designation" – "concept" – "reference", the reference indicates the individual substantiation of a, by its nature, always abstract concept, in other words: a concrete individual thing. The references appearing in the material VerbaAlpina is dealing with allow mostly a figurative depiction as drawing or photography. In comparison with designations and concepts, the references are of secondary importance in VerbaAlpina. Depictions, mostly photographs, are used as – so to speak – 'aid' within the context of the <a href="https://doi.org/10.5282/verba-alpina?urlappend=%3Fpage_id%3D493%26db%3D232%26single%3DM12">crowdsourcing</a> in order to make the references more easily conceivable for the <a href="https://doi.org/10.5282/verba-alpina?urlappend=%3Fpage_id%3D493%26db%3D232%26single%3DM30">informant</a>s, as the concept descriptions are at times necessarily long-winded,.